Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958)

Over at Movie Mezzanine, I wrote some thoughts about Anthony Mann's stirring 1958 masterpiece, Man of the West, starring a perfectly cast Gary Cooper as a man whose attempts to leave behind a life of crime will only bring him back from whence he came. It is a harrowing film, one of the bleakest in a viciously bleak filmography, a vision of violence as a self-perpetuating cycle that consumes all who fall in it and offers escape only in a bloody death. One of the greatest Westerns of all time.

My full piece is up now at Movie Mezzanine.

Something Old, Something New: Déjà Vu / Resident Evil: Retribution

More belated links. At Movie Mezzanine, I compare two great Vulgar Auteurist pieces, Tony Scott's Déjà Vu and Paul W.S. Anderson's Resident Evil: Retribution. Check it out.

Night Across the Street (Raúl Ruiz, 2013)

Raúl Ruiz's final completed feature (another is being finished by his widow) is as cryptic as the few other Ruiz films I've seen, with a host of modernist references to obscure literature and music at every turn. Yet the sense of playfulness and mourning that informs the whole feature needs no familiarity with the director. Taking Beethoven to the cinema, following ghosts as they peer in on each other, Ruiz finds sad but hilarious ways to handle his impending death. And he films it all with immaculate precision, his constantly shifting but always pristine mise-en-scène enriched to deliberately artificial degree by his use of DV. Admittedly a neophyte when it comes to the late Chilean director, I nevertheless have adored what little I've seen of his, and I suspect I might treasure Night Across the Street even more with subsequent viewings and a deeper immersion into such a tantalizing filmography. If nothing else, it's a hell of a swan song.

My full piece is up at Spectrum Culture.

Criminally Underrated: Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

I wrote about the weakest (but still delightful) Neveldine/Taylor feature to date, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance for Spectrum Culture's Criminally Underrated series. After vastly overrating The Dark Knight Rises last year and even cooling on my more muted enjoyment of The Avengers, Ghost Rider 2 feels like the best of last year's crop of comic book films (close second: Dredd), and its ingenuity impresses me where the increasing severity of the tentpole super flicks is becoming more facile and stylistically dull.

My full piece is up now at Spectrum Culture.

Netflix Instant Picks 2/1/13—2/7/13 and 2/8/13—214/13

Since I forgot to link to last week's Netflix picks, I'll just post links for that one and the one that went up this morning.

Netflix picks 2/1/13—2/7/13

Netflix picks 2/8/13—2/14/13

Oscar-Nominated Shorts

I have capsule reviews for each of the animated and live-action shorts nominated for this year's Oscars at Spectrum Culture. They are mostly a wan bunch, lacking the spark of the best short-form artistry and in some cases feeling like mere fragments where a good short feels as if it contains the world. Even so, a few here and there piqued my curiosity, and some even entertained me.

The post with capsules is up now at Spectrum Culture.

Trash (Paul Morrissey, 1970)

Man, I've got to get better about updating this place with links. My review for Paul Morrissey's excellent, transgressive Trash (my first Blindspot entry of the year) has been up for some time at Movie Mezzanine, but I forgot to link to it here. Suffice to say, it's a brilliant, blistering film that also finds an empathy through its actors that the camera otherwise would not communicate. Highly recommended.

My full piece is up at Movie Mezzanine.